$tan Kroenke Becomes Soul Owner

[Tony's nose]

Didn't Knoenke leverage the club's assets to get a bridge loan to pay off Usmanov for his shares? No better than the Glazers really.

I dont think so , i think his 500 million loan is through KSE with wifey as guarantor .

 

[Maybe]

Sorry but I have to disagree with the essence of what you are saying here. You are correct that he didn't buy the club by saddling it with debt, but since buying Arsenal he has taken out debt elsewhere using Arsenal's bank balance as collateral. We have more money in the bank than any other PL club (200m+) and we can't use it because Kroenke's other business interests prevent us from doing so.

We have enough money, we wouldn't even need his own cash if he would just release the cash that we have generated ourselves. To say we simply don't have the money just isn't true. We do have it - we can't use it because of Kroenke

This was already explained many times before. We needed long term sponsorship deals and cash reserves for the loan that we took in early 2000s. Bear in mind that some of the big clubs crashed financially just before that, so the banks didn't want to take big risks without any assurances. At the time our income wasn't that big and matchday income played a huge role in that. That was the main reason for the new stadium. There wasn't a single report that Kroenke took any of our stocked money out of the club.

I think that the board didn't anticipate few things that changed everything:
1. Huge commercial and TV deals
2. Broken player market because of the Abramovich and oil investors
3. Rapid increase of salaries and agent fees

What Wenger did from 2004-2010 was an absolute masterpiece! Not talking here about football (although we did play some stunning football at the time), I'm talking about how efficient he was with everything. I'm also kinda sad that he didn't stay at the club taking some different role that would suit his age and knowledge better.

 

[Rex Stone]

This was already explained many times before. We needed long term sponsorship deals and cash reserves for the loan that we took in early 2000s. Bear in mind that some of the big clubs crashed financially just before that, so the banks didn't want to take big risks without any assurances. At the time our income wasn't that big and matchday income played a huge role in that. That was the main reason for the new stadium. There wasn't a single report that Kroenke took any of our stocked money out of the club.

I think that the board didn't anticipate few things that changed everything:
1. Huge commercial and TV deals
2. Broken player market because of the Abramovich and oil investors
3. Rapid increase of salaries and agent fees

What Wenger did from 2004-2010 was an absolute masterpiece! Not talking here about football (although we did play some stunning football at the time), I'm talking about how efficient he was with everything. I'm also kinda sad that he didn't stay at the club taking some different role that would suit his age and knowledge better.

He’ll be back at some point I’m sure, him moving straight upstairs might look like it’s undermining Emery.

 

[TheEconomist]

This was already explained many times before. We needed long term sponsorship deals and cash reserves for the loan that we took in early 2000s. Bear in mind that some of the big clubs crashed financially just before that, so the banks didn't want to take big risks without any assurances. At the time our income wasn't that big and matchday income played a huge role in that. That was the main reason for the new stadium. There wasn't a single report that Kroenke took any of our stocked money out of the club.

I think that the board didn't anticipate few things that changed everything:
1. Huge commercial and TV deals
2. Broken player market because of the Abramovich and oil investors
3. Rapid increase of salaries and agent fees

What Wenger did from 2004-2010 was an absolute masterpiece! Not talking here about football (although we did play some stunning football at the time), I'm talking about how efficient he was with everything. I'm also kinda sad that he didn't stay at the club taking some different role that would suit his age and knowledge better.

I agree with what you've said but none of it is relevant to my post, you said it's been explained many times before but then went on to speak about something irrelevant. You haven't addressed my last point at all. I'm not sure why you started talking about 10 years ago when I was talking about today? I understand as well as anyone how good a job Wenger did at the time. But that just isn't relevent in this discussion

I'm talking about right now where we have 200m+ in the bank, our debt is all but paid off. We have record sponsorship and are the most cash rich club in the premier league yet only have £40m to spend if we fail to beat Chelsea and only about 70m if we do beat Chelsea. Meanwhile, Kroenke is spending upwards of 6bn on investments outside of Arsenal.

How do people not see the connection here that our assets are being held as collateral to fund his other investments? You won't find any articles about it, because he hasn't "withdrawn" money from our club. He's done it in a way which is much more sophisticated and just as harmful to us. This is why most fans and journalists haven't picked up on it, yet they use the same incorrect argument that he "hasn't taken money from the club " what he's doing is just as bad.

Just to further make my point on this: here's an extract from a guardian article.

" KSE has funded the large part of the offer to Usmanov with a loan from Deutsche Bank, and although they say in their statement to the stock exchange that this is “not being funded by way of any debt finance”, nobody would be any the wiser if, after he assumes full control, Kroenke leverages the value of Arsenal to service that loan."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/07/stan-kroenke-arsenal-football-fans


Also. Just think about it. Stan Kroenke as we all know doesn't give a **** about what we all want or think. Yet even he felt the need to make a statement to refute this claim on a technicality.

The problem here is that what Kroenke does to our club in terms of leveraging our assets is completely private and confidential. There's no way we can ever find out. Even if it was public information,most journalists and fans simply don't understand finance well enough to appreciate how damaging this is to Arsenal

 

[al-Ustaadh]

I agree with what you've said but none of it is relevant to my post, you said it's been explained many times before but then went on to speak about something irrelevant. You haven't addressed my last point at all. I'm not sure why you started talking about 10 years ago when I was talking about today? I understand as well as anyone how good a job Wenger did at the time. But that just isn't relevent in this discussion

I'm talking about right now where we have 200m+ in the bank, our debt is all but paid off. We have record sponsorship and are the most cash rich club in the premier league yet only have £40m to spend if we fail to beat Chelsea and only about 70m if we do beat Chelsea. Meanwhile, Kroenke is spending upwards of 6bn on investments outside of Arsenal.

How do people not see the connection here that our assets are being held as collateral to fund his other investments? You won't find any articles about it, because he hasn't "withdrawn" money from our club. He's done it in a way which is much more sophisticated and just as harmful to us. This is why most fans and journalists haven't picked up on it, yet they use the same incorrect argument that he "hasn't taken money from the club " what he's doing is just as bad.

Just to further make my point on this: here's an extract from a guardian article.

" KSE has funded the large part of the offer to Usmanov with a loan from Deutsche Bank, and although they say in their statement to the stock exchange that this is “not being funded by way of any debt finance”, nobody would be any the wiser if, after he assumes full control, Kroenke leverages the value of Arsenal to service that loan."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/07/stan-kroenke-arsenal-football-fans


Also. Just think about it. Stan Kroenke as we all know doesn't give a **** about what we all want or think. Yet even he felt the need to make a statement to refute this claim on a technicality.

The problem here is that what Kroenke does to our club in terms of leveraging our assets is completely private and confidential. There's no way we can ever find out. Even if it was public information,most journalists and fans simply don't understand finance well enough to appreciate how damaging this is to Arsenal

@Slartibartfast

 

[Maybe]

I agree with what you've said but none of it is relevant to my post, you said it's been explained many times before but then went on to speak about something irrelevant. You haven't addressed my last point at all. I'm not sure why you started talking about 10 years ago when I was talking about today? I understand as well as anyone how good a job Wenger did at the time. But that just isn't relevent in this discussion

I'm talking about right now where we have 200m+ in the bank, our debt is all but paid off. We have record sponsorship and are the most cash rich club in the premier league yet only have £40m to spend if we fail to beat Chelsea and only about 70m if we do beat Chelsea. Meanwhile, Kroenke is spending upwards of 6bn on investments outside of Arsenal.

How do people not see the connection here that our assets are being held as collateral to fund his other investments? You won't find any articles about it, because he hasn't "withdrawn" money from our club. He's done it in a way which is much more sophisticated and just as harmful to us. This is why most fans and journalists haven't picked up on it, yet they use the same incorrect argument that he "hasn't taken money from the club " what he's doing is just as bad.

Just to further make my point on this: here's an extract from a guardian article.

" KSE has funded the large part of the offer to Usmanov with a loan from Deutsche Bank, and although they say in their statement to the stock exchange that this is “not being funded by way of any debt finance”, nobody would be any the wiser if, after he assumes full control, Kroenke leverages the value of Arsenal to service that loan."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/07/stan-kroenke-arsenal-football-fans


Also. Just think about it. Stan Kroenke as we all know doesn't give a **** about what we all want or think. Yet even he felt the need to make a statement to refute this claim on a technicality.

The problem here is that what Kroenke does to our club in terms of leveraging our assets is completely private and confidential. There's no way we can ever find out. Even if it was public information,most journalists and fans simply don't understand finance well enough to appreciate how damaging this is to Arsenal

You were talking about our cash reserves, and I explained why we have them and why we kept them all these years, simple as that. Our debt is not yet paid off, and even when we clear it, I expect from the club to keep healthy cash reserves. The times when our cash reserves would make the difference on the market are gone, even with the 100m+ spending on the market today doesn't guarantee you any success on the field.
Our budget is big enough to achieve bigger success on the field, it's time for the management to learn how to use it properly.

I understand what you are saying, but so far none of his business had any implications on our budget. Our budget was what we earn every year, never less and never more. I don't trust too much in what news and twitter idiots are saying about our budget, but before any big spending, we need to clear the squad first and that will be harder than anybody expects here.

 

[progman07]

Have to agree with the above regarding the club spending money of late, people make out that we spend nothing when in reality;

Auba: 60m
Laca: 50m
Xhaka: 40m
Mustafi: 36m
Özil: 42m
Sanchez: 38m
Sokratis: 14m
Torreira: 27m
Leno: 22m
Perez: 18m
Elneny: 11m
Chambers: 18m
Welbeck: 18m
Gabriel: 13m
Debuchy: 13m

That is a random list of some of the last 5yrs of players in, I'm not claiming they are good or bad buys all I'm stating is thats over £400mil on transfer fees alone, we have spent money, we have just spent money poorly, very poorly with players moving on for low resale value or on a free due to contracts and bad management, none of which is really down to Kroenke personally, there is no way he would know Mustafi is a bad buy etc.

You also have to remember the times we had the Bendtners and Denilsons etc who were on decent wages and were at the club for a long long time as no other club would touch them, the club has been pissing money down the drain since we moved to the Emirates.

Yes. We do spend what we have, we are barely making a profit nowadays.

The issue is that he doesn't even know half of these were bad buys, and he doesn't care at all either. But even worse, I doubt he even knows which place we finished this year.

When your owner doesn't care a little about the Club, we make appointments like Gazidis, let him and Wenger ruin our salary structure, allowing players' contracts to run down, or appoint two CEO wannabes who are supposed to share the position, or whatever.

 

[Gooner Zig]

We needed long term sponsorship deals and cash reserves for the loan that we took in early 2000s.

One of our debt covenants is that we keep a "minimum debt reserve" of around £30m, anything above this is "surplus" to requirements, depending on one's risk appetite.

From 2014 our cash reserves have been > £200m except for 2017 when it dipped to a "low" of £180m. It is now back (as of May 2018) a record £230m. There is no reason on Earth we need to have our cash balance this high. We are legally obligated to reserve ~£30m to comply with the terms of our loan agreement for the stadium but that's it. We have completely under utilised the resources we have had at our disposal, especially given that back in 2014 (when we purchased Özil) we could have purchased another two to three ELITE players on top of Mesut.

The fact that we hoarded cash while transfer fees went through hyper inflation was a scandal that should have seen the whole management and board (incl Wenger) sacked for pure malfeasance if we had an owner who gave a modicum of ****s

 

[Gooner Zig]

The argument that we've "spent money" lacks context. Yes of course we've "spent money" because due to the riches of the TV deal, a plumber will cost you £20m when 5 years ago, £20m would get you a pretty damn good player, while the £30-40m bracket would basically get you world class.

The summer we splashed all that money on Mustafi, Xhaka, Perez would have gotten us two-three elite players a few seasons prior. This is when we had double or even treble the purchasing power yet we did nothing.

We completely and utterly ruined our Champions League status and let clubs like Liverpool and Tottenham pass us by because of a refusal to spend money at the right times.

 

[Maybe]

One of our debt covenants is that we keep a "minimum debt reserve" of around £30m, anything above this is "surplus" to requirements, depending on one's risk appetite.

From 2014 our cash reserves have been > £200m except for 2017 when it dipped to a "low" of £180m. It is now back (as of May 2018) a record £230m. There is no reason on Earth we need to have our cash balance this high. We are legally obligated to reserve ~£30m to comply with the terms of our loan agreement for the stadium but that's it. We have completely under utilised the resources we have had at our disposal, especially given that back in 2014 (when we purchased Özil) we could have purchased another two to three ELITE players on top of Mesut.

The fact that we hoarded cash while transfer fees went through hyper inflation was a scandal that should have seen the whole management and board (incl Wenger) sacked for pure malfeasance if we had an owner who gave a modicum of ****s

Our reserves goes up and down all the time, depending on the time of the year you are looking at them. I agree that there were some seasons when taking some money from reserves would've give us more success on the pitch and in return we would earn money from prizes and TV.
In football you never know, you can invest huge amount and get nothing in result like we did in 2016/20017, and if we did something like that before (let's say 2009), we would have problems earning it again. That's why I understand some of the reasons why we kept the money in the bank.

 

[Rain Dance]

I don't really see what are you trying to prove with Reyes and Arshavin and our scouting network. The whole modern era of Arsenal was built on scouting network and foreign players. For every Reyes, Arshavin and Vela we have players like Henry, Fabregas and RvP who did adjust to UK and had a great career here. (From my experience, UK is the easiest country to adapt to)

You said it was easy for foreign talents to adapt, history said it wasn't. Most of our foreign talents went back to their home country.

You are still going with your argument that 10-15 years ago we couldn't keep our young players because we couldn't offer them money, which is true, but I don't see why you can't understand that we can offer them money now as it's clear that we have multiple contracts from 150k-350k.

Just stating facts that young players will go toward where the money is, but there is no guarantee a young player is consistent enough to warrant a huge amount of money. Offer good money to prime aged players, instead of young players.

Everybody want's an overhaul here, but there is not a lot to sell, and the reason for that is that we didn't produce any additional value over the last couple of years.

And why is that? cause we aren't title challengers

I will repeat myself here, Kroenke didn't ban investments here (yet), we spend the whole budget every year. If you can't understand that, I'm afraid there's not much to discuss in that case.
You should be more specific with what do you want from Kroenke. He allows us to spend our budget and he doesn't interfere with football side of business. The only thing he can do more here is to come and watch our games, if that helps.

I want him to invest. Period.
Hands off approach is fine from a far but other club owners invested money. You say he didn't ban investments but how many of our transfer came from him, and not from money the club made?

 

[Beksl]

The fact that we hoarded cash while transfer fees went through hyper inflation was a scandal that should have seen the whole management and board (incl Wenger) sacked for pure malfeasance if we had an owner who gave a modicum of ****s

Couldn’t agree more! It’s the core of the problem because we lost a lot of equity through inflation.

On the other hand I can understand the logic, especially if the owner(s) are more interested in the growth of the value of the Club. It’s easier to increase the value of your assets with inflating your cash balance and revenue streams through exorbitant TV/commercial deals rather than through investment and success on the pitch.

It’s a rather short term logic because you either do this if you have an exit strategy ie want to sell in the near future or you want to use it as a leverage for your other business endeavours which is exactly what Kroenke is doing.

 

[MustOezil]

He’ll be back at some point I’m sure, him moving straight upstairs might look like it’s undermining Emery.

who gives a **** about Emery. Wenger spent 20 years here and has brought this club to where it is today. He deserves to go straight up.

 

[Mrs Bergkamp]

One of our debt covenants is that we keep a "minimum debt reserve" of around £30m, anything above this is "surplus" to requirements, depending on one's risk appetite.

From 2014 our cash reserves have been > £200m except for 2017 when it dipped to a "low" of £180m. It is now back (as of May 2018) a record £230m. There is no reason on Earth we need to have our cash balance this high. We are legally obligated to reserve ~£30m to comply with the terms of our loan agreement for the stadium but that's it. We have completely under utilised the resources we have had at our disposal, especially given that back in 2014 (when we purchased Özil) we could have purchased another two to three ELITE players on top of Mesut.

The fact that we hoarded cash while transfer fees went through hyper inflation was a scandal that should have seen the whole management and board (incl Wenger) sacked for pure malfeasance if we had an owner who gave a modicum of ****s

I love Wenger and Ken Friar even if I've no time for the rest of the board. If the owner won't release funds, then it's pointless sacking others. And if the owner states privately what the (small) budget is, then it's easy to say the manager can do what he wants or has spent the total budget.

 

[Gooner Zig]

Our reserves goes up and down all the time, depending on the time of the year you are looking at them.

I don't understand what your point is here? Our reserves are one of the highest in the PL, we are an incredibly cash rich club. Why are they so high? Liverpool for example have averaged a cash balance of ~£7-8m over the same period - what does that tell you?

 

[Tony's nose]

I sometimes wonder if Kroenke would sell once his LA dream has been built. Owning Arsenal would be very reassuring to the banks whilst building his LA project.

Or worse case scenario we completely get left in the cold while he jerks off over his LA dream once complete.

However its not a great place having the 70s pornstar as our owner.

 

[Wrighty4eva]

I sometimes wonder if Kroenke would sell once his LA dream has been built. Owning Arsenal would be very reassuring to the banks whilst building his LA project.

Or worse case scenario we completely get left in the cold while he jerks off over his LA dream once complete.

However its not a great place having the 70s pornstar as our owner.

:rofl::rofl:

 

[Ceballinhos]

https://www.arsenal.com/news/owners-are-hugely-ambitious-club

lmao

 

[Wrighty4eva]

https://www.arsenal.com/news/owners-are-hugely-ambitious-club

lmao

That article is a complete joke, and if you read between the lines it really does tell you all you need to know about the ownership of this club, they are practically clueless about it. Strictly business to them, a shame really.

 

[hydrofluoric acid]

Kroenkes, Raul and the other guy really must think that Arsenal fans are stupid.

Disgusting really from them.